Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 233

Here's an excerpt from a book I recently read, "Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life," by Amber Scorah.

As futile as this work might sound, we had given up any thought of building a life in the world we had been born into, because this world was ending. Soon we would live in paradise, on Earth, and God would bring destruction on those who were not of our faith. It was our duty to save them, or if not save, at least warn them. We were very invested in the trade-off we had made. We gave up any hope of a career, or education, financial security, and certain relationships, all for the sake of saving these people, and goddammit—no pun intended—we were very concerned about their impending destruction. You wanted to save just one of these uppity, self-satisfied people for your trouble. I can use the “we” and speak with such certitude of a collective of over eight million people because we all believed without a shadow of a doubt that this paradise would soon be ours.